| Einstein can’t be classed as witless/ He claimed atoms were the littlest
When you did the bit of splitting-’em-ness/ Frighten everybody shitless.
Ian Dury, "There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever Bastards" (1978)
Marilyn Monroe: It’s one thing remembering it; I just wish I understood it all.
Albert Einstein: You learnt it without understanding it?
The world’s most famous equation turns 100 this year. It was sometime during the summer of 1905 when Albert Einstein, then employed as a clerk in a Swiss patent office, first put to paper the simple formula that would change the course of history. There is, after all, a more or less direct line from Einstein’s scribblings to the bombs that detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki 40 years later. And but for E = mc2, there’d be no "weapons of mass destruction" – at least, not as commonly conceived – and so, presumably, no invasion of Iraq in 2003.
That equation, which formed the basis for Einstein’s theory of relativity, ranks alongside Galileo’s laws of motion and Newton’s computation of gravity as one of the fundamental "discoveries" of western science over the past millennium. Works by all three men, for example, appear in Martin Seymour-Smith’s The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written (1998). But more than either of his predecessors, Einstein and his calculation have become ingrained in contemporary popular consciousness.
For example, a quick search through Amazon.ca reveals almost 190 biographical studies of Einstein currently in print. By comparison, Galileo gets just over 50, Newton a mere 70 or so. Nic Roeg’s Insignificance, featuring an imaginary meeting of Einstein and Monroe in 1953, in turn inspired Big Audio Dynamite’s song "E = mc2," while more recently David Bodanis penned a biography not of the man but the equation itself.
I’m most indebted to Bodanis for helping me, finally, come to grips with just what E = mc2 really means and why it matters. In five brilliant (and brilliantly succinct) chapters, he explains the history of each element (i.e. E, m, =, c, and 2) and their significance when combined. Having abandoned any formal schooling in physics at a very early age, over the years I’ve maintained what can most generously be called a dilettante’s curious interest in a few scientific matters – the Big Bang, time’s arrow and evolution – without any deep (or even accurate) appreciation of any. But Einstein’s theory of relativity always lay just beyond my grasp.
Wait, don’t get me wrong. I did know that E = mc2 means, literally, "mass equals energy times the speed of light squared." I also had some glimpse of its immediate significance, namely that mass and energy were somehow linked to one another. And I also knew that c2 was probably a very big number. But that was about it.
After reading Bodanis, however, I finally began to appreciate the immensity of Einstein’s work. The speed of light is roughly 300,000 kilometres per second; the speed of light squared therefore is 90 billion kilometres per second. If E (energy) is equal to m (mass) multiplied by that figure, it stands to reason that it only takes a tiny mass of material to convert into an enormous amount of energy. That, of course, is the key to nuclear fission (or is it fusion? I’m still not clear on that).
And that’s my point, really. If I were to continue to parade my newfound knowledge, two things would become clear: one, beyond the basics I would start to make many, many mistakes; and two, like Monroe in Insignificance, while I can repeat what I’ve learnt, I’m less sure that I do, in fact, really understand it.
And that’s the way with so much established wisdom and knowledge, it seems. In Science in Public: Communication, Culture, and Credibility (1998), authors Jane Gregory and Steve Miller discuss current concerns about the low level of "public understanding of science," yet concede that there is actually little or no agreement as to just what those words actually mean. "All in all," they write, "disagreements abound as to whether the public (whoever they are) should, can, or would want to understand (whatever that means) science (however defined)."
In related fashion, E.D. Hirsch in Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (1987) bemoans the modern decline of literate knowledge in the U.S. Hirsch defines "cultural literacy" as "the basic information needed to thrive in the modern world" and provides all manner of instances to support his pessimistic view. As antidote, he offers a list of 5,000 people, places, events, ideas, sayings, dates, etc. that he deems essential knowledge for modern literate Americans.
It is, of course, a dumb, pathetic exercise in one-upmanship. Hirsch’s list – which runs to more than 60 pages – reflects his own learning and biases (Guthrie gets in, Dylan doesn’t), but it also resembles two old guys sitting on the porch muttering about "kids today…." More importantly, it’s never quite clear how simply knowing stuff – knowing, not understanding – should be mistaken for cultural literacy. Unless, that is, Hirsch had Ken Jennings in mind as his American idol….
And so it is with me and Albert Einstein. I know his equation, E = mc2, to be one of the most important scientific breakthroughs of the modern age, and I’m happy to see both him and his work appear on Hirsch’s list. When pressed to do so, I’m even able to repeat some of its more significant implications. But do I really understand E = mc2? Not at all.
Guess I’m not such a clever bastard after all. |
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